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Suit charges Kaiser with false advertising practices

Kaiser Permanente used false and misleading information in its
television advertisements to recruit new members, a class-action
lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges.

In its ads, the health maintenance organization states that only
doctors, not insurance administrators, make decisions about patient
care at Kaiser.

"That is an emphatic statement that can be easily refuted," said Jamie
Court, advocacy director of the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumers
Rights, which filed the suit. "Anyone who joins was subject to the
representations in those ads."

From 1996 to 1998, nearly 500,000 members were duped into joining the
health plan on the strength of the spurious ads, which cost Kaiser $60
million per year, Court alleges.

Kaiser officials said Tuesday its doctors were enraged by the allegations.

"Medical care at Kaiser Permanente rests in the hands of doctors," said
Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Permanente
Medical Group of Northern California. "It's the thing of which we're
most proud. No health plan administrator has anything to do with any
decision made in the exam room."

The suit names Kaiser's health plan and hospitals and the Permanente
Medical Group as co-defendants. It says doctors' influence has been
slipping at Kaiser over the last four years as administrative and
fiscal concerns have undercut medical resources.

Health plan policies that reduce the number of patients hospitalized,
shorten the length of hospital stays, shift certain duties from doctors
to less-trained medical staff, limit access to prescriptions and cut
the medical budget, all erode the decision making power of doctors,
Court said.

The suit, filed in State Superior Court in San Francisco on behalf of
Kaiser patients, covers both television and print ads launched by the
nonprofit health plan. The most recent series uses the slogan, "In the
hands of doctors," and cost $8.4 million last year, Kaiser officials
said.

In addition to seeking damages for patients supposedly deprived of
medical care, the action seeks to have Kaiser's ads yanked from the
airwaves.